harlot, stimulated by gingerbread and a postal order
THINGS WE NEED TO WORK ON
1. Night Crisis Syndrome. Otherwise known as the fact that Nora does not seem to be able to handle a normal sleep-cycle interruption by rolling over, replacing index finger in mouth,* and going back to dreamland but instead has to get up and run crying down the hallway in full panic mode. This happens about once a night and I am so over it. I don't think she even knows what she is crying about—sometimes there is some garbled baloney about her blankets being messed up, a noise in the room, or confused time-distorted questions about wanting breakfast, but mostly it is just OMG AWAKE IN THE NIGHT! MUST FREAK OUT! MUST OBTAIN MOMMY!
I don't know how she sleeps at all, frankly, what with her insistence on having some crap ninety-nine-cent-bin CD of Mozart's “greatest hits” on continuous repeat all night, which would drive me MAD and lead to a 4 am home lobotomy attempt. Particularly since the first track is that execrable tune that my college chamber orchestra and I used to call “Eine Kleine Shutthefuckup.”
*I choose not to get uptight about this, although plenty of people have counseled otherwise. In fact, I actually find finger-in-the-mouth useful as a signal flag that Nora is getting really tired, because it is not like she walks around all day like that. Sometimes I mentally sigh at her (adorably) crooked baby teeth and her pale, wrinkled pointer finger, but on the other hand I do not see how I can possibly police another human's hands, mouth, and self-comforting needs every minute of the day (and night).
2. Holiday tact. I have a bad feeling that, come gift-giving time, some well-meaning relative will bust out with a Pink Disney Fairy Princess Barbie On Ice With A Tiara And Did We Mention She Also Rides A Unicorn? So I need to talk to Nora about saying thank you and shutting up, and reminding her that when the party is over and we are all alone she will be perfectly within her rights to discuss her utter repulsion. The spirit of Christmas! Ungrateful bitching behind closed doors!
3. A more general holiday tutorial may be needed, because here's Nora, musing on what might be behind door number three on her Advent calendar: “One was a dove. Two was a teddy bear. I wonder what will be three? Maybe a ham.” Some people have ham for Christmas but we do not, so from whence the ham conjecture?
(Sign #46 that you need to put down your copy of Ulysses and quit mucking about with the concordance as well: you find yourself typing phrases like “from whence the ham conjecture.” I do apologize.) (“He listened to her licking lap. Ham and eggs, no.” Okay, now I'm really done.)
4. More homemade t-shirts. I bought some t-shirt transfer paper long ago for personal use, and little did I know it would be Nora who ended up getting the most mileage out of it. When she was despondent about the preponderance of Thomas and the lack of Emily on kids' clothing items, LT happily stole images from the internet and made Nora her own Emily shirts. Lately there have been requests for “t-shirts with words,” including a proposal for one that merely says GRRRRRR. I am happy to indulge, but some limits may need to be set:
Nora: What's a really long word?
Me [trying to think of a long word she would know]: Uhhh…”refrigerator” is a pretty long word.
Nora: Is it the longest word?
Me: No, there are longer words.
Nora: Okay, so what is the longest word? The long long long long longest? With the most letters?
Me: I think the longest word in English is “antidisestablishmentarianism.”
Nora: I will have it on my t-shirt.
THE KINDER, GENTLER BIFF BANG POW
If anyone has recommendations for my comic-book-obsessed kid, I would be happy to hear them. I own tons of indie and weirdo comic books, but they are all (a) really wordy and static and thus very dull for the pre-reader (Optic Nerve) or (b) disturbing and probably inappropriate (R. Crumb, Lenore, Meatcake), not to mention impractical and humiliating because I have no desire to answer the inevitable preschool questions about things like sexual fetishes and the undead. That would be a big NO THANK YOU. However, mainstream kids' comic books are usually lame and overly tangled up with crappy TV shows and toy product placement. Right now Nora enjoys Sam and Max, which features more firearms than I would like (she calls them “drills” and I do not correct this) but also lots of cool detail in the drawings; Ren and Stimpy (particularly this odd crossover issue); and, curiously, The Far Side (which she has not a hope in hell of understanding, but sometimes I guess it is enough to see cows do odd things).
NOISY SEASON
I am sort of getting into the holiday spirit, mostly by drinking lots of wine and blowing out my eardrums with wall-of-noise bands like M83 and Spaceman 3 (what's with all the threes, shoegazers?) My musical choices were inspired by the weather and an impulsive download of that Lilys album that I had in college and somehow lost, probably in a move. Thanks, iTunes! It is not really winter unless Mimi Smartypants is inebriated, introspective, and insane with reverb!
Okay, enough with my mommyblogging and my pop-culture shorthand-to-the-construction-of-a-self nonsense. I would also like to say that a certain department that resides near mine keeps a bulletin board illustrated with birthday wishes to their staff, birth announcements, “de-stressing” tips, cartoons, and other assorted crap. Which is fine, if a little nauseating. However, if you are going to do this kind of booster-club bullshit, you simply must keep it updated, because now nothing is more depressing than my walk to the fax machine, where I get to look at old Halloween decorations and the scrunchy-newborn picture of a baby that is now one year old.
As long as I am being annoyed, it sucks that there is a web-design company called Transfinity. My man Georg Cantor would not be wasting his time designing your fucking web page. He had bigger things to worry about, literally. Although my poking around online in search of aleph-one indirectly led to this dumb joke, which I love very much:
Q: What is the first derivative of a cow?
A: Prime Rib!
—mimi smartypants is a lucky girl to live in her building.